Posted
by
samzenpus
on Wednesday August 11, 2010 @06:52PM
from the i-can't-give-you-that-candy-dave dept.

JoshuaInNippon writes "Not sure what you're thirsty for? New vending machines in Shinagawa Station in Tokyo will tell you based on your age and gender. The machines, controlled by a centralized server, come equipped with sensors that recognize basic costumer information, and then provide recommendations alongside the list of available drinks. A massive 47-inch touch panel display is used in place of the typical button system, allowing for an automatic digital advertising mode when no people are directly in front of the machine." A Massachusetts-based vending machine company has even come up with a line of biometric snack machines that tie your thumbprint to a credit card.

Hope is all they'll manage. Unfortunately human preferences don't work this way, and the only people who will consider the machine's guess to have been "right" are gonna be the people who didn't really have a preference in the first place, and are more swayed by the power of suggestion or confirmation bias.

Come to think of it, they're selling to the young Japanese public. They'll make a killing.

It doesn't matter if the machine is always wrong, as long as you can still buy a Diet Coke from it. It doesn't force you to drink one of their suggestions, but the novelty of the machine will attract some people, and if it is sitting next to a "dumb" vending machine, most people will at least try it instead, assuming the prices are the same. And the potential added sales of "Would you like a Nutribar with your Diet Coke?", which can't be too far behind, WILL increase sales.

"Uhm, how do you make any money off your vending machine if it's a horrendously over-engineered piece of expensive technology?"

Plus if the interest rates on your credit cards are through the roof? I actually enjoy Amazon one-click buy of cheap dvd's, mp3 downloads, etc., but the 17.99% rate just sucks the fun out of it. I suspect I would be equally turned off by a smart guessing machine that also causes me to incur an 18% liability.

Lets hope the "Central Server" doesn't do something important in its spare time like run traffic signals or something. It could be quite a disaster is somebody feeds in all this information about the history of the East India Company.

Lets hope the "Central Server" doesn't do something important in its spare time like run traffic signals or something. It could be quite a disaster is somebody feeds in all this information about the history of the East India Company.

On one hand, that could make for faster tea delivery.On the other hand, it could lead to a great mutiny.On the gripping hand, we'd end up drinking Asian dispenser pop with opium.

Lets hope the "Central Server" doesn't do something important in its spare time like run traffic signals or something. It could be quite a disaster is somebody feeds in all this information about the history of the East India Company.

As long as someone ensures that the manufacturers are first against the wall when the revolution comes.

A massive 47-inch touch panel display is used in place of the typical button system,

I wonder how many of these machines are going to get stolen?

Zero. There's the cultural difference of the japanese people in which they don't even think about stealing or vandalizing it. Then there's the fact they have "police boxes" sprinkled about the place. Also consider the fact that people just don't have any room to put it in their apartments. It also a high probably that it will transform into a robot to defend itself.

Zero. There's the cultural difference of the japanese people in which they don't even think about stealing or vandalizing it.

I find the same to be true about parcel delivery in the United States. Although I'm sure delivered goods -do- get stolen off of doorsteps all the time.. it appears to be relatively safe enough that people do have things delivered to their doorstep and just dropped off there left in clear view until they get home.. and most of the time apparently not have them stolen.

I don't ask for stuff to be delivered to my doorstep here in the US, but I can't seem to convince UPS or the post office that such a thing isn't a great idea. Although, I'm usually less worried about it getting stolen then I am about it getting wet, since it inevitably rains whenever a package is due to be delivered.

I know I don't worry about it, although USPS doesn't deliver to my home address, so we're talking UPS and FedEx. I live in a small town where in the past 10 years there have been maybe three crimes more severe than "random juvenile vandalism". One of those was somewhat more severe juvenile vandalism (I was the victim in that case, someone slashed the top of my car [Geo Metro convertible]), and the other two were arguments that got out of hand and became assault. Two of those involved no charges being pre

Until just a couple years ago they still had [reuters.com] unregulated cigarette vending machines in Japan. Now the cigarette vending machines require something called a "taspo." These cards are free of charge by mail order with proof of ID, and "The smoker's picture will be on the card, although the vending machines will not be able to read the images, so they won't be able to tell if the customer is legitimate." Perhaps somebody from Japan can comment on the difficulty of obtaining a false taspo, but it doesn't soun

Beer is in vending machines all over japan. Has been for a long time. About 300 yen and off you go with your Sapporo Ichiban or Kirin or Asahi Dry. No ID, no hacking, no elaborate physical or mental contortions.

Tobacco is more difficult. But I don't know how secure the rfid (I think?) cards are. Probably not very. I'd guess, although I have no proof, that its more a feel-good thing than an actual attempt to quash underage smoking.

Machine trying to sell movies.
Machine I am trying to verify your sex. Please remove pants.
Machine displays video of two naked women making love.
Machine Perhaps you need some help
Machine's hand reaches out to massage genitals.
Machine okay I now see what your sex is and what stimulates you so here is list of latest movies for sale.

Back in graduate school I made a proof of concept vending machine whose goal was to be able to vend beer within the local council's licensing laws.

It was a combination of the early smartcards (8k), biometrics and micropayments.

The idea is a person would register showing proof of age, have their thumb print scanned, and purchase electronic 'tokens' which were then loaded into the smartcard with the user's print. To buy a beer, the user would insert the card, validate the print - the server would then authori

Firstly, I remember a miss-spent youth in which I and my friends would do all sorts of mean things to vending machines. Can you imagine what could be done to a machine with a 42" touchscreen lcd in just a few seconds? Secondly, a thumbprint payment system? Don't they know it's already been proven that thumbprint systems are incredibly easy to hack? (as in a photocopy of your thumb works on them) Just about every company that's attempted something similar has been sued into bankruptcy almost immediately afte

The original James Bond film, Casino Royale, was a much sillier spoof on the 'international superspy' film genre than the less tongue-in-cheek films which came after it - and Bond's odd drink preference was contrived to make him sound a bit poncy. And yet now he and his drink are the broadly accepted standard of suave manliness.

The Bond films were all a bit tongue in cheek at times, however, James Bond was the pinnacle of cool for decades.However, in response to spazdor, Casino Royale was the first Bond book, but not the first Bond movie. Bond drank martinis in the books, and it was in no way supposed to be "poncy". He then drank them in the movies, starting in with Dr. No in 1962, five years before Casino Royale the move came out. Casino Royale was a spoof of the movies, based loosely off the first book, which at that time had

Some of us just want hot women and cool action scenes, even if they're over the top. Which is what Daniel Craig provided. Just too bad the damn things had so much ad placement, but even with the ad placement, I still consider it more enjoyable than when Pierce Brosnan was at the helm (how was that tub of lard supposed to be a super spy? c'mon...).

Try Pandora. There you just have to kick off all the house music once every 30 minutes. Or depending on the station seeds it might be guitar virtuoso crap instead. Much less annoying.

Being stereotyped by machines isn't exactly my idea of a good consumer experience. Why do companies think this sort of thing will impress customers? I'd be much more impressed if they just stocked a diet cola that wasn't sweetened with aspartame.

Plenty of things break down to formaldehyde (methanal) as part of digestion. Oranges, tomatoes, grapefruit, and especially alcohol, which creates far more than aspartame does. You get a larger dose from a glass of orange juice or your canned fruit than from a glass of diet coke. The human body is quite capable of metabolizing the small amounts of it found daily.

I went to Japan a couple years ago and did quite a bit of cycling around Tsukuba. Pocari Sweat is like their Gatorade. It tastes fine at first, but the more you drink it, the more it actually tastes like sweat. By the end of a long day, you might as well be ringing out your shirt.

I would be okay with cutting down on corn subsidies, but I wouldn't say that drinking soda is never appropriate. I mostly drink water, but a soda often tastes good, and not everybody is concerned with living to be 100 years old, and most of the people that do attribute their good health to things like a pound of lard, a bottle of whiskey, and an assortment of sexual partners.

I understand your point, but my answer is easier to remember. Occasional use is undoubtedly no problem, but I would further assert that once a week or so is an upper limit. I suspect you are under 40 years old. After that each one counts a lot more.